Tools for researching the past

When it comes to researching your forebears, you can either be pleasantly surprised or sorely disappointed. Cases that fit into the latter category are more common than you would think. Many of our past relatives seem to leave great historical gaps in their wake rather than the opposite. As a matter of fact, is much...

The Ashburton Museum Archive is always kept busy answering enquiries and assisting people to undertake research on a wide area of topics. Normally the answers to questions are then stored away in a book or computer, and images purchased from us are hung on a wall or printed and published. Rarely does the information we...

Reserves have played an important part in the history of Ashburton District and were some of the first areas defined for use in early surveys. Today they are governed through the Reserves Act 1977 and continue to play an important part in land use in the Ashburton District. The establishment and management of reserves has...

Ashburton Museum is home to thousands of individual maps and plans of various sorts, carefully kept in 100 large and purpose-designed map drawers. An ongoing project for the museum is the cataloguing of these maps and plans so that they can be more accessible and useful for researchers. An important type of map in the...

Museums do many things – and amongst the things they do, collecting is central. Yet it’s not just museums that collect. Many people do. Estimates range from 30-70 percent of us being collectors, yet it’s possible that collecting is an almost universal passion. What makes a collection? While some may think a collection needs to...

Mr Toner’s Court Case

One of the amazing things about newspaper stories, is the unusual discoveries that can be made through them, telling of history that cannot easily be found elsewhere. One such story is the tangled web concerning Mr Toner of Alford Forest, as told through local newspapers. On 17 April 1886 the story broke of Mr James...